10GB = abuse?

[Monad]

Today I received a phonecall from someone at Sentech stating that I’ve exceeded 10GB of traffic in September; that this was now defined as abusive according to the contract; and could I please tone it down a bit? I, of course, denied that I was doing anything abusive. Further, I’ve just this morning submitted a request for refund for September – since I’ve been unable to exceed 4kB/s for the whole of September – and usually much less than that. So, how 10GB could be reached under such circumstances boggles the mind.

When I signed up in April it was for a 128Kb, uncapped, always-on service. How can they now legally change the contract to a 10GB cap?! I (naively) assumed that 75% of capacity was reasonable. How can less than 25% of capacity, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered reasonable? I didn’t sign up for a 32Kb link!

If the current throughput prevails, the traffic I generate is likely to increase. I told the caller as much. It seems that they know they have no legal leg to stand on, since I was assured that the 10GB cap was not a cap, but merely a guideline, and that further (unspecified) steps would have to be taken if I continue to exceed the limit.

What is this supposed to achieve? Is this some half-hearted scare-tactic to try and intimidate users into using less bandwidth? How many have fallen for this?

‘P’d-off (even more)

 

[koosbeer]

Don't mind them Monad! As in previous topic, i were also contacted by sentech about me exceeding my 10 GIG "guideline"! He said that if 'n wanted to download more, i should upgrade (to 256). i almost lauged! if i wanted to dwonload more, i'll get a dail-up modem!

__________________________
128 Package - KilnerPark - Pta
__________________________

 

[VQuest]

Are these people out of their cotton-picking minds? 10GB a month is considered abuse? Only in South Africa!!

----------------
United we stand!
----------------

 

[Monad]

Yup, he also suggested I upgrade, but I told him that from what I've seen on this forum, going to 256 would more likely be a downgrade - which I _definitely_ was _NOT_ going to do...

 

[koosbeer]

Yip.. they seem out of their minds! I'll stick with this **** for a while!

(no landline, no contact from telkom, no broadband - please help!)

__________________________
128 Package - KilnerPark - Pta
__________________________

 

[MrJones]

Rumour has it, if you exceed the designated amount for the 512K package, you get beaten with sticks.

Please mommy make the bad man stop. (Bad Man = Sentech)

 

[fairplay]

Fact has it (as I was told) that if you exceed 10GB again (I dunno I guess the next month) they will call you and the third time they will disable your username and password. This was told to me by a Schalk from Sentech.. sounds very much like a cap to me.
I thought the product I bought was uncapped and also because I thought that I would think getting under 10GB a month is a degraded service since a 128k user should be able to download over 25GB a month (we all know this is probaly not possible)

 

[noswal]

Please someone correct me,

if I have a streaming audio signal at 20kb/sec, that is 1200 kb/min or 72,000 kb/hour (7meg/hour) or 1,72800 per day (1.72 gig/day) - then in about 6 days I hit 10 gigs ??

please let me know if I have my maths/ kbs right or wrong


_________________________________________________________________________
custenna, variable 8 - 13 signal, ber 28% - 42%.<i> "I am the only one with this problem." </i>

 

[MrJones]

When I initially signed up, I read in the material somewhere along the line that if you were deemed to be abusing the service, then you would be requested to upgrade to a higher package. Nowhere did they ever state what that amount would be ie 10Gig, 20Gig, 30Gig. I wonder what kind of a legal "leg" we would have to stand on, if someone at Sentech HQ decides that they want to decrease the amounts to say 5Gig, 10Gig and 15Gig. I wonder who the chief thumb sucker is and what he bases the figures on. Would it be to much ask for the formula which they used to come to those figures?

Please mommy make the bad man stop. (Bad Man = Sentech)

 

[stoke]

Example : 254,096,559 took 1:46:19 giving you a rate of 38.90 KB per second.
38.9 KB * 60 = 2336 KB per minute.
2336 KB per minute * 60 = 140040 KB per hour.
140040 KB * 2 = 280,080 :: 280 MB in 2 hours (Close to the 254 MB from earlier proves the calc.)
Therefore: at 38.9 KB per second, you'd do 140040 KB per hour * 24 = 3,360,960 = about 3.4 GB per day.
- so that theory of yours is correct (based on actual data from my download manager).

 

[fairplay]

noswal: 20kilobits/sec = 2.5KB/sec = 216MB/day. Perfect Sentech usage (in Sentechs view). Honestly 20kbps is fckall. But at that rate you have (30*216=6GB) 10-6GB = 4GB left. Enjoy.

edit: multiply by 8 (and weep) if it was 20kBytes/sec - but on 256 that means 48GB so only 28GB over the limit [!]

 

[fairplay]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by koosbeer</i>
<br />Don't mind them Monad! As in previous topic, i were also contacted by sentech about me exceeding my 10 GIG "guideline"! He said that if 'n wanted to download more, i should upgrade (to 256). i almost lauged! if i wanted to dwonload more, i'll get a dail-up modem!

__________________________
128 Package - KilnerPark - Pta
__________________________
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

No. if you want to download more just download more. Stupid idiot. Why get a more expensive package if you can get another 20GB out of 128k. Stoopid sentech logic.

 

[Perdition]

The point is not that you can get more out of the 128k link, but Sentech wants you to pay more for "abusing" the 128k link. I don't think this is the best time for Sentech to start policing their customers given their track record... then again maybe they enjoy losing customers.

 

[LordVader]

I'm dying for Sentech to give me a call! If this only download, and no upload, I'm about half a gig over already. If it's upload and download, I think they'd have called me ages ago already.

They recommend moving up to the next package? Screw it! If 256 works like it should, It'll be like giving more candy to the same baby. Give me more bandwidth, and I'll break the 256 cap!

I'm paying for 128K of local and international bandwidth with a maximum contention of 30:1. Contention, as of about 2 weeks ago seems to have been properly applied. So, basically, If I can download over 10Gb in one month, It means that there is enough available bandwidth to do it with. At an absolute worst case senario, everyone on the network will get the equal contention, not sharing!, of the bandwidth.

All this apart from the fact that a cap is in breach of contract. At first, Sentech just had a mention of an AUP that didn't specify a limit. Then when Sentech shouted 'ABUSE', they mentioned something about hogging 50% of the bandwidth (~ 15Gb on 128K). Now, it's down to 10Gb!

If I wanted a cap, I'd get DSL, I got Sentech, specifically for the 'uncapped service'.

If they lock my account, it'll be ALL OUT WAR!!!

 

[CreepyCrawley]

This looks like it could be fun to watch... actually... it's like a bad soap opera.

It's at times like these that I'm kinda glad that neither Sentech or Telkom find my area particularly economically viable to actually provide adsl or mywi coverage. Otherwise I'd probably be in the same **** as everybody else on this forum.

Telkom se ma...

 

[aborg]

Its the year 2004 won't we remember this quote "10GB would be enough for a broadband connection" - sounds almost like a quote I saw in the 1980's.

"Broadband in SA is like the holy grail - everybody knows what it is but nobody has ever found it"

 

[fairplay]

the dumb thing is it seems that international traffic takes priority over local (not complaining here) if you run 2 local downloads and overseas at the same time.. the internationals go faster. But overall the service seems to be working nicely like it did in the good months. I can browse while doing some downloading and pages load up nicely. now take away the capping and the service is perfect (right now, maybe not tomorrow)

 

[nonroker]

unfortunately only for you 128k users. Us 256k and 512k users are still being screwed

--
256k ... BAH..more like 25.6k
FSCK YOU Sentech!! [!]

 

[geoffr]

[This opinion is entirely my own, and does not reflect the opinions
of my employers, customers, or even anyone looking through the
window]

It would be useful to ponder, for a moment, what it costs Sentech to deliver
the MyWireless service. (I am not considering whether the quality of the
service is good or not.)

If we consider 10G bytes per month, that equates to a continuous 33kbps
stream. If you are pulling that down internationally, the raw bandwidth
from Telkom can cost a few thousand rand per month. Even if only 50% of
your traffic is international, that is still a 4 figure sum of money for
the _cost_ of international leased line capacity.
On top of that, Sentech have to pay a 6 figure sum per base station, which
they put up. If you assume a 5 year depreciation cycle for all their capex,
they still have to recover a lot of money. (I realise that users do not
respect telecoms companies' investments, however, these investments do need
to be considered when examining the cost of providing service.)

Thus, whatever way you skin this cat, a 128k user, who downloads 10G per
month is getting a damn good deal for his money, and probably should not
complain about getting a call from Sentech. There is no such thing as
a free lunch.

G.

 

[koosbeer]

Yet again: NOT OUR PROBLEM!!!
We signed up for a uncapped service which should give us the speed of that specific package.
ENTER SENTECH:
We don't get the promised speeds, we can't possibly download a lot because the service is super sucky. If, by some miracle we get to download something, a "guideline" is introduced (CAP)!

We're not mouning about the cap, we are mouning about the sneaky b@5tards at sentech who change the service as they deem fit (introducing a cap on a promised uncapped service)!

THIS IS BULLSH!T!!!


__________________________
128 Package - KilnerPark - Pta
__________________________